Julia Sugarbaker

Julia Sugarbaker McElroy is a fictional character in the long-running television series Designing Women. She was played for the show's entire run by actress and singer Dixie Carter. Dixie, a registered Republican, however, quite libertarian, found it somewhat hard to play the extremely left-leaning character and so made a deal with the producers. For every Terminator rant that Julia shouted, Dixie, who was beginning a cabaret style show, was able to sing in other episodes.

The head of Sugarbaker's

Julia is the daughter and eldest child of Derek and Perky Sugarbaker (Louise Latham). She is twelve years older than her sister, former beauty queen Suzanne Sugarbaker; between them in age is their half-brother Clayton (Lewis Grizzard). Clayton has two daughters, Camilla (who acts exactly like Julia) and Jennifer; they were portrayed on the show by Dixie Carter's real life tdaughters, Ginna and Mary. Decidedly more artistic and prone to speak her mind than her vain sister, she supposes herself to be more well-read and more knowledgable. Julia lived in many places, including New York and in Paris, where she once studied. While her sister Suzanne has been married three times in her life, Julia was married only once, and it was to the love of her life. Julia's husband, Hayden McElroy, died of a heart attack prior to the start of the show. At loose ends, Julia decided to open an interior design business. She hired a top-notch decorator, Mary Jo Shively, a divorced mother of two; she also asked Suzanne to join in the business, mainly as a financial backer (although Suzanne claimed to be the head salesperson). Julia hired her late husband's secretary, Charlene Frazier Stillfield to be their office manager. Later on, she hired deliveryman Anthony Bouvier, who the women later made a partner. Another person close to Julia, although definitely not related to her, was her mother's best friend, Bernice Clifton. Bernice had what Julia's mother called "an arterial flow problem above the neck." This got her into the most outlandish situations; but she considered Julia and her friends to be part of her family. Julia's pride and joy was her son, Payne McElroy, named after her paternal great-grandfather. He gave her fits on occasion, but she dearly loved him, seeing her husband in him. Payne was married to Sylvie, a girl he met while in college, and supposedly got pregnant. The marriage was strained due to this, but Julia gently talked her son into going back to New York, where he and his wife lived, to work things out with her. Julia became involved with attorney Reese Watson, who was equally as bombastic as she was; his nickname for her was "Sassy". (Reese was played by Dixie Carter's real-life husband, Hal Holbrook) until he died in the show's fifth season. When he died, ironically, of a heart attack, the same medical condition that befell her late husband, she almost fell apart. He had also had a heart attack in the second season of the show and both times, she was understandably upset and scared, which, given her normal strength, is quite unusual for her. These catastrophic situations allowed the normally shallow Suzanne to truly rise to the occasion and help her make arrangements, to deal with the other details that Julia couldn't handle at that moment, and also to give her some much needed comfort. (As Charlene often stated whenever these situations occurred, "I mean she (Suzanne) usually doesn't have the sense God gave a goose. Yet, one crisis and she's Scarlett O'Hara.") At about the same time of his death, Julia helped take care of a client's unruly daughter, Randa Oliver (Lexi Randall). Her unruliness was part of a deep seated resentment towards her parents, who were forever leaving her alone to be looked after only by the servants. After a rather harsh night, Randa became more polite and pleasant to be around. She stayed for about three episodes. After sufficient mourning for Reese, she then went out with a doctor, named Dr. Hacker, (played by musician Gary Morris) who was taking care of her for a hysterectomy, but that too failed. She was very cool towards; often not too fond of, and sometimes outirght hostile towards her obnoxious cousin, Allison Sugarbaker, who had taken over Suzanne's share of the business, and also, to Anthony's consternation, Suzanne's house. In fact, her relationship with Allison was almost all-out war. She got along a little bit better with Allison's replacement, down-to-earth wealthy widow, Bonnie Jean "B.J." Poteet.

The "Terminator"

Julia, who is politically liberal, has a tendency to speak her mind, and at times it can be very forceful. This tendency of giving off rapid fire and well-worded spiels, against which her targets have absolutely no defense, gave her the apt nickname "The Terminator". The targets of these very verbose arguments have included, among others, politicians, newspaper reporters, pornography publishers, sleazy photographers and others whose beliefs Julia finds intolerable. She has even used her terminator tirades to defend her sister, Suzanne, after a Miss Georgia World viciously insulted her. While most of her tirades usually got results, other times, they weren't as successful. One of her tirades cost her a seat as a city commissioner when she told her more bigoted opponent off during a debate. Another tirade cost her a place on the annual historical tour of homes, when she told off the tour group, and the snide historical society representative, Karen (Mary Ann Mobley) about their selling of the myth of the Old South. A more successful tirade however, sent a sleazy photographer, DeWitt Chiles, out the door after he totally misrepresented himself to the well-meaning, but naive,Charlene, and nearly made Julia suck pearls, while dressed in a man's suit, no less. This situation also caused his assistant, Estelle Rhinehart (the late Wendie Jo Sperber), who despised him (in her words, she hated his guts), to quit her job. She then revealed that she herself was a photographer, and she stole his film, and replaced it with some more tamer pictures of women of Atlanta that Julia had suggested (as opposed to the more sexually explicit ones of the women at Sugarbakers that he was hoping to sell). This situation occurred in the episode, The Women of Atlanta in 1989. In the episode, the real-life restaurant Mary Mac's Tea Room, was mentioned. One of her most venomous and arguably, her most successful, tirades was toward a Dr. Mitchell who had a tendency to be rather arrogant and not very wise in the ways of medicine. She pointedly informed him that she was filing charges against him with the State Medical bureau and the AMA, because he had the nerve to tell Charlene to not worry about a lump in her breast, which went against everything Julia had ever learned (she and Suzanne were brought up in a medical family). It also turned out that Julia and Suzanne had a mutual friend who was treated by that same doctor, with fatal results. The most powerful and memorable part of Julia's wrath came at the end when she told Dr. Mitchell, "You're seemingly a kind, benevolent authority figure who tells women to let you do their worrying for them, but there's just one thing wrong with that, Dr. Mitchell: you don't have to do the dying!" This tirade occurred in the episode Old Spouses Never Die. Another well remembered tirade was against a so-called "old friend" and longstanding client of Julia's named Imogene Salinger, whom she had known for over twenty years, who had discovered that she and her co-workers were designing a funeral for Kendall Dobbs a design colleague who was gay and dying of AIDS. Julia eventually lost her as a customer, but felt better at having told off her intolerant ex-friend. In this tirade, she gained an unexpected ally in Suzanne, who is not usually known to be sympathetic towards gay people, but in this case, made an exception and also echoed her sister's indignity towards the homophobic comments. Despite her tendency to go off on one of her rants, not see both sides of an issue, and her extreme pride, Julia is a warm person and a good friend.